A tool used by researchers to navigate archives and records collections. The broadest term to cover any description or means of reference made or received by an archives service in the course of establishing administrative or intellectual control over archival material.

The whole of the records, regardless of form or medium, organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular person, family, or corporate body in the course of that creator’s activities and functions. In broad terms, the fonds is the chief archive unit according to archival arrangement that links the creator to a body of records.